


Maybe it's the Opposite of Love

by Anonymous



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Dirty Talk, Dirty Thoughts, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, Light Dom/sub, M/M, One Shot, Oral Sex, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Rough Sex, Semi-Public Sex, Sexual Content, Sexual Tension, Turtleneck Fetish, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-08
Updated: 2020-02-08
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:20:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22609165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Prompt Fill: Malcolm is secretly in love with Gil Arroyo, the man who's been a father figure to him for decades. He copes by sleeping with someone who looks like him, because who really has time for healthy coping mechanisms and processing your emotions?(Featuring LDP's Ian Edgerton from Numb3rs as Gil's stand-in) Warnings for PWP, language, dark and twisted bullshit, etc.
Relationships: Gil Arroyo & Malcolm Bright, Gil Arroyo/Malcolm Bright, Malcolm/Ian Edgerton
Comments: 10
Kudos: 97
Collections: Prodigal Son Kink Meme - Anonymous





	Maybe it's the Opposite of Love

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ToriCeratops](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ToriCeratops/gifts).



“That’s him, isn’t it?”

Malcolm stares straight ahead, refusing to turn his head even though he can _feel_ Special Agent Ian Edgerton over his shoulder, leaning in close to whisper in a conspiratorial tone.

Instead he stares across the room, watches Gil walk in front of the whiteboard as he briefs the crowded room where NYPD detectives are gathered. And it’s not just the NYPD today. The FBI is here too this time. Specifically the agents on loan from the New York office, flocking in by the dozen to consult on what can only be called an extremely sensitive case.

“We need their help on this one,” Gil explained after misreading Malcolm’s borderline panic attack when he heard the news. “They’re just here to assist. It’s still our case, kid, don’t worry.”

Malcolm could only nod and stare and wait, feeling his heart sink because he knew without asking exactly who they’d send. The only person they _could_ send when it came to something like hunting a sniper across the city.

Special Agent Edgerton is just about the last person Malcolm wants to see right now, and he’s right here. Standing too close to his shoulder, smelling like gun oil and a dark cologne the profiler’s never been able to place.

“I think I get it now.”

Ian is lingering casually close to him; the room is crowded enough that everyone is already overflowing into each other’s space. It’s nothing unusual and nobody suspects a thing. Ignorance is bliss.

Malcolm feels his arm brush against Ian’s jacket, feels his body heat stretching out to him like reaching fingers. He suppresses a shudder. 

His heartbeat is knocking in his ears. Worse still, his pants are already feeling a little tighter and this isn’t the place to be having a problem like that. Not the place and not the time.

“I always wondered why I couldn’t get you to call me daddy.”

“Stop it,” Malcolm snaps at last, because anyone could overhear them. Anyone could look in their direction at just the wrong moment and _see_ everything. Years of history and sexual tension he’s already pushed to the back of his mind and glazed over like a bad dream.

He looks back at Gil and wishes he’d been faster. Quicker on his feet. Wishes he’d been able to escape the precinct before the FBI arrived and his window for disappearing with a believable excuse closed completely.

Gil’s wearing a black turtleneck under his jacket and all Malcolm can think about is touching it. Feeling the fibers and ribbed edges and skin under his fingertips.

From behind him, Ian chuckles quietly. Between the sight of Gil doing absolutely nothing unusual and somehow still looking goddamn extraordinary, and that familiar voice close enough he can feel it, Malcolm’s body is done. Reacting in ways he can’t control, aching for things he shouldn’t want.

Shouldn’t need, after all this time.

_Well. I’m fucked._

**.**

Ian’s body slams into him, and Malcolm feels the air leave his lungs as his back hits the wall. 

Big hands slide under his suit jacket, pulling at his shirt, tugging folds of pressed fabric free to reach his skin.

“We shouldn’t be doing this,” Malcolm sighs into a demanding mouth, because he’s supposed to say it. He’s supposed to put up a fight. 

He’s _not_ supposed to let himself fall into brown eyes and sharp cheekbones and a broad chest without trying to stop himself, feeling something inside himself die slowly with every surrendered inch.

“You’re right,” Ian growls against his neck, and it doesn’t stop him. It doesn’t stop either of them. 

They’ve done this in some stupid places, but the bottom of the stairwell in the NYPD precinct probably takes the cake. It’s impossibly dirty and frantic, made all the more dangerous by knowing someone could be walking down those stairs at any second. It’s unlikely of course; there’s minimal traffic here and they’re hidden in the shadows on the bottom floor, where the emergency exits offer a one-way route to the employee parking garage. But it’s still not private, not as sheltered as Malcolm would prefer it if he was thinking straight. 

Instead his hands are wandering, tracing patterns over Ian’s chest, all but ripping at the canvas jacket hugging his shoulders. Hungry. Impatient. 

The agent is kind enough to help, breaking his rough hold long enough to slip each arm out of the sleeves before he’s back attacking the profiler’s body. Like he wants him, _needs_ him, and losing contact for even a second is an impossible task. 

Ian rips Malcolm’s belt out of the restrictive loops without fanfare, letting it clatter to the floor with a sound that only eggs them on. Heat pools, low in Malcolm’s belly as he listens to himself whine.

That hot, demanding mouth is everywhere. A tongue diving between his lips like he needs this just as badly as Bright does. The profiler doesn’t want to examine that too closely, doesn’t want to spend too much time asking himself _why_ they do this to themselves. Why it works, why they keep coming back to something that’s the textbook definition of self-destructive.

Ian sinks a saliva-slick knuckle inside him, stretching him roughly. It burns, but Malcolm pushes back against it anyways. He’s rock hard and straining against his boxers, feels the fabric growing slowly damp because he’s already leaking precome like a teenager.

“Missed this,” Ian breathes as he watches him, a lazy smile flashing white teeth.

And that doesn’t help either, because through half-lidded eyes and dark lashes Malcolm sees someone else entirely.

Instead of answering he surges forward, capturing Ian’s mouth and fighting his tongue with his own as he fucks himself on those reaching fingers. Drops a hand down to palm the bulging hardness stretching against the agent’s slacks. 

“Impatient this time, aren’t we,” Ian laughs quietly. Despite his teasing, he doesn’t seem to mind.

A strong arms hitches under Malcolm’s leg, sliding him bodily up the wall as a palm lands against the bricks beside his head. The profiler’s hands scramble for purchase as he holds on tight, riding the thrill of being physically manhandled in a way he's ashamed to admit.

He sinks his teeth into Ian’s shoulder and hates himself for it. Hates himself for being here, for caving so easily to the twisted, sick parts of himself that want somebody else but settle for this, for _him._ Because they have the same eyes, the same smile. The same build if you squint at just the right angle. 

He still isn’t sure if they have the same voice, or if he just hears _his_ voice in Ian’s because he wants to. Because it’s all he’s thinking about every time they do this. Slotting warm bodies and needy hands into stolen moments like a placeholder for each other’s ghosts.

Malcolm forces himself to relax and does a piss poor job of it as that hot length nudges at his entrance, and there’s only spit and precome between them but it doesn't matter. Nothing else matters except he needs to be full, needs it _right the fuck now_. 

“You can say his name,” Ian says as sharp teeth close onto the profiler’s earlobe. “Say it.”

“Please,” Malcolm says instead, and it comes out wrong. Thin and reedy and high-pitched like he’s begging for something else entirely.

Ian pushes against the tight ring of muscle, centimeter by agonizing centimeter, and it’s still not enough. Not nearly enough.

“Please what?”

He sinks in. Slowly. Too slowly. He’s impossibly thick, throbbing and warm.

“Please… Gil—!”

Ian groans low in his throat, and Bright can feel him stiffen inside him. The bigger man picks up the pace and thrusts up hard, his fingers digging into Malcolm’s hips to hold him in place as he fucks him. Harder and harder still until he’s sliding up the wall in short, jerky movements.

Malcolm drinks in the pain. The way coarse brick and mortar burns against his back. Blunt fingernails leaving little crescent moons in his skin. That impossibly wide girth stretching him open, holding him there. Impaling him.

Owning him.

“Again,” Ian growls, and he gets that sound in his voice. Like he’s enjoying watching Malcolm suffer, like it gets him hard. Because it does.

And god help him, it works both ways.

“Fuck me Gil, I fucking need you, please—” Malcolm babbles mindlessly, the dams cracking open a little more with every word. 

All the twisted parts of his soul that he hates most bleeding out into the air. Harsh breaths and the slap of skin and little grunts of pleasure. And Gil’s name, whispered like a confession.

Because despite doing everything in his power to stop himself, Malcolm fell. Spun out into the eyes and arms of someone who was a father figure to him when he so desperately needed it. When he craved a strong male presence to look up to, to hold onto, Gil was there. Filling the void left by his own father, soothing the open wounds. Offering the kind of love and acceptance his hurting childish heart needed so badly.

And like the idiot he is, Malcolm took it too far. Lost himself in it. He _fell_ for Gil, kept that knowledge hidden under lock and key because he’s never been so ashamed. Which is saying something, because he’s ashamed of himself for so many things. 

He was doing so well. Hiding it. Keeping it ruthlessly pushed down under familial affection and lingering glances.

Until now Until he lets Ian—someone who looks too much like the lieutenant he’s stupid enough to love—fuck him against a wall in the basement staircase. Let’s himself say Gil’s name like this twisted sham can somehow fill the bleeding hole in his chest.

“I see the way you watch me, Malcolm,” Ian huffs out in unsteady breaths, unrelenting in his pace as he pants against the profiler’s skin. “I see what you really want from me. You know I want it too.”  
  


“I want it,” Malcolm repeats mindlessly, feels darkness creep in the corners of his vision. A large hand wrapping around his neck and squeezing, leaving him drifting in that in-between place where everything is real and nothing is.

When he closes his eyes he can pretend it’s someone else. He can use Ian like he always has, in stolen moments in shadowed corners thinking someone else’s name, seeing someone else’s face. 

Someone he shouldn’t want. Shouldn’t need.

But he does. He thinks about it late at night when his brain won’t let him sleep and he stands in the shower, begging himself to let go. His treacherous mind drifting back to the way Gil laughs, like that’s something that has any business turning him on. 

Touches himself in the dark and imagines those hands are on him instead.

It’s Gil holding him up, whispering _good boy_ in his ear and relaxing the agony inside of him because he so badly needs to hear it.

_What’s wrong with you,_ Malcolm asks himself through blurry eyes. 

“Fuck me Gil,” he says again, gaining confidence and losing himself. 

It’s wrong and it’s disgusting and he knows it. And it hurts. Rips in his chest like torn stitches and old blood. A reminder that he’s not normal for this, he’s broken, wrong. He’s not sure he’s ever been so disgusted with himself in his life.

Ian shoves him up against the wall in one long, angry motion before dropping his leg, pulling out long enough to turn the smaller around. He shoves Malcolm against the edge of the railing leading up the stairs, and it’s painful as it digs into his ribs, but comfort is the last thing the profiler cares about right now.

The agent shoves back inside him without preamble. Malcolm bites his lip until it bleeds and pushes his hips back, eyelids fluttering at the intoxicating combination of agony and pleasure. He can feel his neglected cock bobbing against his stomach as he bends over the metal, as Ian picks up the pace.

A noise overhead, somewhere far above. A creaking door. Steps on the stairs.

Malcolm freezes, his brain blanking out as panic takes over. He opens his mouth, tries to reach a hand back to stop Ian but the bigger man catches his wrist and pins it against the railing. Wraps the other around Malcolm’s mouth and stifles his little sounds of exertion as he picks up the pace. Driving into him over and over while the soft patter of steps sound far overhead.

Malcolm wishes he had the strength to stop him. To at least not be turned on by it even more because it somehow just enforces the fantasy that it’s not Ian at all behind him, filling him up. 

They’ve never done it like this before, never so publicly. In bathroom stalls, Ian’s car, a locked closet—not here by the emergency exit where anyone could walk down and find them.

The profiler isn’t sure what it says about him that he’s doing this. That he swore it off but is still letting it happen.

Leaving Ian behind when he left the FBI didn’t change anything. It didn’t fix him. Just brought him closer to the real thing, close enough to touch and impossibly far away because he’ll never be allowed to.

Gil will never see him as anything more than a kid he took pity on twenty years ago. A child. A burden. He’ll never see _him._

Another creaking door. The footsteps disappear. 

Ian lets out a breathless noise like a laugh, drops his hand and just fucks him harder. There’s a frenzied motion to his hips like he’s close enough to finish, and Malcolm feels a bitter flash of irrational rage knowing that. Knowing that it’s going to be over, and the fragile fantasy he’s built in his head will shatter and crack and end.

He doesn’t want it to end. He needs more.

Like he’s reading his mind, Ian leans over him, angling up deeper into Malcolm’s body and reaching around to take the smaller man’s weeping cock into his hand.

Malcolm hears the noise he makes at the touch but doesn’t recognize it. Doesn’t recognize himself at all anymore.

“Come for me little Malcolm Bright,” Ian says, and with his voice low and hoarse like that it’s too easy to hear Gil’s voice. To hear the way he might whisper filthy things to him if it was all real.

The profiler presses his forehead against the cold metal railing and lets himself get lost in it.

“God yes—” he chokes out when Ian finally, _finally_ hits the right angle and leaves him seeing stars, his cock jumping in that lazy grip.

“I always find it, don’t I.” Ian sounds so pleased with himself, because he’s always had a way of wrecking Bright inside and out and he finally knows why. 

“I always know how to get you there, because it was never me at all, was it?”

Bright presses his eyes shut tight and gasps for air.

“You dirty boy,” Ian murmurs against Malcolm’s shirt, his hand tightening, the little upward motions picking up speed. It's wet and sloppy because Bright’s already half-there, writhing under the touch. 

“I wanna hear it again. Who’s going to fuck you until you come, Malcolm?”  
  


“You are.” Malcolm sobs, and his entire body is shaking violently. It’s a miracle his legs can still hold him up, a miracle he hasn’t collapsed right there on the spot.

“Tell me.”

“ _Gil—!_ ”

Ian’s thrusts pick up. Deeper and deeper still until he bottoms out and lifts Malcolm up onto his toes with the force of it. Once, twice, and he lets out a groan that echoes off the concrete walls. 

He sounds like Gil might, if it was the cop standing behind him, pressing into him. Filling him up like Malcolm wants to badly to be filled. Spilling hot seed into him and leaving him dirty and damaged.

Sinking his teeth into his own wrist, Malcolm comes too. Stars explode behind his vision as all the blood in his body funnels downwards and electricity douses his veins. He’s soundless, riding the mindless high of euphoria as it crashes over him in waves.

He listens to Ian breathe, sweaty and breathless against his damp shirt.

“Goddamn that was amazing,” the other man mutters as he slowly eases his weight away, his warm hand leaving Malcolm hanging and twitching in the aftermath.

It’s all the profiler can do to hold himself up, to grip the railing with shaky hands and try to straighten his unsteady legs. 

The after always hurts. Somehow it’s worse this time. Worse because his mind won’t rest, won’t let him have even a heartbeat to float in it and keep up the facade. 

It’s not real. It will never be real.

Malcolm feels sick.

“It’s even better than I remembered, in fact.” Ian is still mostly talking to himself as he pulls his pants up, wipes his hands on his boxers and pulls it all back together the way Malcolm thinks he should. As usual he either doesn’t notice Malcolm’s lapse of concentration or he doesn’t care. 

That’s always been both the best and the worst part of this arrangement. It’s just sex.

Bright swallows the queasy feeling building up in his throat like acid. He can put his clothes back on, but he can never feel clean. Not when he still does this. Still lets someone who looks way too much like Gil fuck him senseless because it’s somehow easier to use him that way than ever admit how fucked up he is. 

He can’t help but think that if Gil knew the terrible things Malcolm lets Ian do to him while he cries out the cop’s name… he’d be ashamed. 

With that sour taste still lingering in his mouth, Bright pulls his jacket back on. Tucks in his shirt and tries to ignore the stabbing pain in his ass that will probably stay with him for days as a reminder of his sins. Back when he worked at the FBI and this was a more frequent occurrence, he used to carry lube with him for exactly these moments. 

It doesn’t seem to matter now. Maybe the reminder will help. Maybe it will let him get lost in it again when he’s drifting and high on sleep deprivation and pills. When he’s alone and at his weakest and can only think about one person on the entire planet.

_I’m sorry, Gil. I’m so sorry._

**.**

Malcolm stands up straight as he steps back into the boardroom, adjusting his tie with fingers that have finally ceased tremoring. Pulls his sleeve down over the angry red bite mark he left in his own wrist an hour ago.

Ian makes eye contact from across the room, a meaningful secret glittering in brown eyes.

The profiler forces himself to look away, plasters a convincing smile across his face.

Gil is standing at the head of the table, turns to smile at him as he catches Bright walking in,

“Where’d you disappear to, kid?” He asks, and his tone is always so happy, and uplifting and optimistic and everything Malcolm isn’t.

“Needed some fresh air,” Malcolm lies with a smile. 

He can do this. He’s been doing it for twenty years.

He feels Ian watching him across the room, but it doesn’t bother him anymore. He watches Gil and imagines his hands. Imagines what he would feel like inside him. What it would feel like not to hate himself for what he needs. 

“This can’t happen again,” he tells Ian as they step onto the elevator together at the end of the day.

It’s destructive. It’s wrong.

“Absolutely not,” Ian agrees easily. He folds his hands in front of him and tilts his head back as the doors slide closed. “If that’s your decision.”

“It is.”

**.**

“Tell him what you want.”

Ian’s voice is deep and smooth and familiar. He wraps a hand in Malcolm’s hair and yanks him up to watch the saliva drip from his lips.

“I want you to blow in my mouth,” Malcolm pants. Holding himself up against the center console, his neck creaking painfully from the odd angle. 

Ian’s eyes glitter, dark and deep in the shadows. He tightens his grip, and the profiler gasps.

“Please, Gil.” He crumbles too easily, feels something inside him crumble too.

“Good boy."


End file.
